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This essay begins by endeavouring to ask the question "How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intentions" but quickly runs into difficulties with the question itself (not least that there is an implication that there is no current mathematical law that may be considered to be "mindful"), which requires some in-depth exploration. I then explore what constitutes "Creative Intelligence" - coming to a surprising conclusion that concurs with Maharish Mahesh Yogi's definition.

Hi, Luke, I have just read your essay. I believe that the points that you list as the rules of reverse engineering are indeed the base of learning theory. So if you want, the operation that I argue that brains do is, within your framework, reverse engineering.

Regarding the other aspects of your essay, I am afraid that I am ill equipped to discuss them as a peer. I am not an expert in the foundations of physics, nor quantum mechanics, and even less, of non-western views of the world. I am actually far from being able to respond to your evolved question. But in any case, I enjoyed reading your essay, because the style was relaxed and accessible. And you provided me with new material to think, which is always great. Thanks!

any time, ines. yeah i had a rather unique upbringing that brought me into contact with the TM movement at a very early age, yet much of that stuff i just took as "read" or for granted at the time. the page on wikipedia about advaita vedanta, "epistemology" section is well worth reading: i played with my daughter and established that, aged seven, she clearly knows the different kinds of knowledge listed there, which i find amazing.

also i apologise that i had to cut the essay drastically and on short notice, i'm relieved to find that it's still readable. thank you ines.

James Arnold wrote on Mar. 4, 2017 @ 18:24 GMT

I enjoyed your paper very much. We are not so far apart, as I think you can see when (I hope) mine is accepted and put online.

Points of disagreement:

“No human being is intelligent”, we “are merely riding on the back of an inherent and fundamental property” of "’The Universe’: the ‘Field’ of ‘Creative Intelligence’."

To this I would say that you’ve posited a duality of the finite and the infinite, which of course is characteristic of religion; why not say we are intelligent because the universe of which we are an integral part is capable of intelligencing?

Another point, I think it’s important to distinguish individuals from conglomerates. The planet earth is in its physical substance just a conglomerate, as is a machine, with no organic feature of individuality.

i was being deliberate in emphasising a perspective where intelligent life simply "borrows" the core fundamental properties of our universe (its capacity for creative intelligence). not least because i find it so incredibly empowering, to think that there could exist or be brought into existence other forms of intelligent...

i was being deliberate in emphasising a perspective where intelligent life simply "borrows" the core fundamental properties of our universe (its capacity for creative intelligence). not least because i find it so incredibly empowering, to think that there could exist or be brought into existence other forms of intelligent life.

i do have to point out that it takes an extreme lack of ego - or detachment from self - to even be able to *contemplate* the thought that we simply "borrow" the universe's substrate for supporting intellect. it's a little... unnerving :)

unfortunately i had to cut the (angry rant) bits which help illustrate the point more clearly (50% of he original essay had to be draconianlly removed), where i lay in to the whole concept of "intellectual property" - as an ethical software libre developer the arrogance with which WIPO has permitted intelligence to LITERALLY be enslaved has me REALLY angry. i left the refeerences in: you can see the link to Dr Stallman's essays but you can also find his (dry, logical) essays online by searching "rms intellectual property" or "stallman IPO".

i quite deliberately and very pointedly avoided mentioning religion in this essay. i also did not wish to specifically make mention of "god", although many people would say that it is the next logical step to begin to assimilate many of the words and phrases used under the umbrella word "god". the problem that i have with that step is that it is one that has been so over-used by those people who lack information, insight and logical reasoning as a way to "excuse everything" that i chose *not* to go down that route and risk people saying, "but... but... you just went directly to saying it's god at the end of the rainbow!"

:)

"we are intelligent because the universe of which we are an integral part is capable of *supporting* intelligence"....

yyyeah, i would agree with that :) it changes the perspective of the intelligent being to being *inside* the "set of intelligence" rather than being the perspecctive of "outside objective observer" from which i make the point that you noted... but both perspectives i would say are perfectly valid.

regarding individuals / conglomerates... i agree it is important to make the distinction (and to recognise the hierarchy which allows an individual to be a conglomeration of different types of something-or-other).

ah! just occurred to me james. i know why i find it important to separate humans from the intelligent framework that the universe provides: if we do not do so it becomes that much harder to imagine the perspective from which *other beings* - or other objects - may also borrow the exact same fabric / property of the universe.

it is most unfortunate that i had to drastically cut the length of the essay by a whopping 50% because examples which illustrated this point (more to the point, showed the *dangers* of believing that intelligence is permitted to us separate and distinct from the rest of the universe) were included in the original.

Mike R McKeen wrote on Mar. 4, 2017 @ 21:34 GMT

Great Essay Luke! Did you save the full extended version?

I have (through less mathematical means) put a lot of thought behind existence, religion, consciousness, etc. and I have come to very similar conclusions. One thought I have recently come to is that in a sense every form of life is simply a vessel for energy to inhabit, your essay has led me to believe that is is more than just life forms, but matter itself is all essentially in the same process, "preserve existence and be part of something larger."

If "Creative intelligence" exists in everything, could it be that "background radiation" from the Big Bang that permeates the entire universe is actually the stream of energy that connects to all matter on some level and drives us as life forms to continue the never ending process of change?

hi mike thank you for the encouraging words, yes i did, it may be found at http://vixra.org/author/Luke_Kenneth_Casson_Leighton

"every form of life is simply a vessel for energy to inhabit... matter included"

hmm, that would indeed seem to be the next logical step, wouldn't it? :)

"if creative intelligence exists in everything"

ah *no*. i take the perspective that it's no so much *in* everything as it is an all-present universal emergent property. drop a series of hydrogen atoms distributed *uniformly* throughout a universe, sit back for a few billion years and you *will* find that stars, planets and life *has* formed, somewhere, beginning first by the hydrogen coalescing into stars and going "blam".

"could it be that background radiation is the energy connecting all matter"?

you may be fascinated to know that, by accident after looking at a paper which said that the number of hydrogen atoms per cubic metre distributed throughout deep space is somewhere averaging around 7, i ran that through a series of arbitrary number experiments and startlingly came up with a tentative link to the *inverse cube* of avogadro's constant.

now, what that tells us is that, at the chemical level, if we *could* have assumed a uniform (random, chaotic) distribution throughout the universe of all atoms, the presence of "coalesced" matter (in the form of stars and planets) - the process by which that occurs - would indeed cause deep space to be void of that same matter but, crucially, we would *expect* there to be some form of inverse correlation between avogadro's constant where matter has been "subtracted" from deep space. which i find absolutely fascinating.

now, coming back to your point: "background radiation" is the level *below* atoms (it's the straight-line equivalent of the looped-on-itself photon), so yes! i *would* expect the background radiation to show up, somehow (in an inverse relation), in our everyday existence. i have no idea how though :)

"could that be what so many religions have deemed 'God'"?

yyyeeesss... but don't tell anyone i admitted that in public. personally i much prefer the daoist perspective which is that, exactly as you concluded above, *everything* is energy and thus everything is connected. in both a fantastically simple (fractally elegant) but ultimately overwhelmingly comprehensive manner. the other thing which i think you will love and genuinely appreciate is that our DNA (thanks to its recursive and compact expression) has a link in every part of our body to *every other* part of our bodies.

You talk about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi identifying the difference between the DNA of an acorn and the DNA of an oak tree being time. You say in other words there is no difference. You have incorrectly interpreted the not incorrect answer given. As it is known that there are changes to DNA over time, damage from radioactivity and free-radicals, transcription errors, virus insertions,...

You talk about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi identifying the difference between the DNA of an acorn and the DNA of an oak tree being time. You say in other words there is no difference. You have incorrectly interpreted the not incorrect answer given. As it is known that there are changes to DNA over time, damage from radioactivity and free-radicals, transcription errors, virus insertions, epigenetic changes to DNA folding affecting gene expression and telomere shortening. All material changes in structure.

You then seem to jump from talking about a conversation about oak trees’ DNA to;” Thus we start to get some hints that if a human is intelligent then so is the DNA that they were born with.” It doesn’t follow, it’s as if some chunk of argument is missing. And you have provided a fallacy of division, it shouldn’t be concluded that the characteristics of the whole automatically apply to the parts. You have used the argument that a human’s DNA is intelligent because the human being is intelligent but then you extend intelligence to all DNA just because it is DNA.

Most scientists don’t think junk DNA is useless. It was once thought to be but now there seems to be evidence that it may have regulatory functions. Some at least thought to be involved with the very early stages development, so not expressed later in life. There seems to be evidence of a whole extra layer of regulation due to non-coding RNAs (transcribed from non -coding DNA) including those involved in spermatogenesis. The “non- coding” DNA regions aren’t random but highly conserved, indicating that they have some importance, preventing the evolution of organisms that have lost or had changes to those regions. In comparison to what they seem to do a random number generator would be junk.

Jumping to near the end – Your “Ultimately”. I think there is introduction of false equivalence when inanimate mindless creation is called ‘creative intelligence’, then presumed as the source of human intelligence which is an entirely different kettle of fish. The word “intelligence “is the same but in the former it is an unnecessary misleading appendage and in the second an emergence from very high levels of organization of matter sustaining specialized functions.

I’m sorry if that is too much criticism. I enjoyed reading your essay, it is a very interesting presentation. I have now watched a video interview with Dr.Hankey talking about his physics education and yoga and Ayurveda, as I had never heard of him before

"You talk about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi identifying the difference between the DNA of an acorn and the DNA of an oak tree being time."

yes, in order to keep it simple-sounding. you are correct inasmuch as the *correct* way to put it would be, "the set of all possible permutations of DNA that may be positively identified as belonging to the family tree of an oak tree, the set of all possible seeds which may be positively identified as acorns, and the set of all possible trees that may be positively idenfied as belonging to the family of oak trees" however much of the point and attention of most readers would, i feel, be lost in the process.

"It doesn’t follow, it’s as if some chunk of argument is missing."

yes. i already had to cut the essay drastically down. you do however pick up on a very important point:

"You have used the argument that a human’s DNA is intelligent because the human being is intelligent but then you extend intelligence to all DNA just because it is DNA."

ah. right. ok. i saw just i think it was today or yesterday where someone had encoded some ridiculous amounts of information (12 petabytes potentially in a single gram) into DNA. it included a short video, a book, and other things, along with some CRC checksums. they then waited 2 weeks for a company to make it for them, then used polymerase reading (or whatever) and were surprised to find that the *full* data set was correctly encoded.

could it be said that such a data set is "intelligent"? no it could not. it's just a data store.

so logically we may conclude that *ONLY* those sets of DNA which have utilised evolution to refine themselves into self-replicating, self-replicated organisms, may be said to *be* intelligent, being as they are only indistinguishable from the actual organisms themselves through the application, process and progression of the phenomenon known as "Time".

which hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out, so i am most grateful.

"The “non- coding” DNA regions aren’t random but highly conserved, indicating that they have some importance, preventing the evolution of organisms that have lost or had changes to those regions."

oo! oo, that's even *more* interesting than the supposition that had occurred to me. that function which you describe is *directly* equivalent to a CRC (checksum) algorithm. in other words it's a safety check. if the DNA is sufficiently badly damaged such that certain sequences have not survived, it is automatically rejected. i wonder if there's an algorithmic encoding that recognises the individual contributions from each parent? that *would* be fascinating.

"I think there is introduction of false equivalence when inanimate mindless creation is called ‘creative intelligence’, then presumed as the source of human intelligence"

.... you've lost me a little, here. bear in mind also that i had to cut out a hell of a lot. perhaps it would help if i re-introduced the augmentation to the maxwell's demon which i had to cut out.

let's change the circumstances under which the demon operates, by making its very survival critically dependent on its continued intake of "gas". let's also make it possible for the demon to move the entire box, and for the box size to grow as the demon sees fit, but also that, correspondingly, the amount of energy required to move the box increases proportionately with size of the box. also let us make the "maintenance" of the fabric of the box result in increased consumption of "gas".

now, beginning from a uniform distribution of gas throughout the universe, in full-on "entropic chaos" mode, our demon (or evolved variants of the same) quickly have to develop hunter-gatherer "survival" techniques and potentially even collaboration techniques in order to secure sources of "gas". over-farming of gas would result in starvation.

*even at this simple level*, the demon (or demons) are *required* to exhibit what we would term "intelligent" - or self-organised - behaviour, taking into account their environment and awareness of each other.

it *really is* that simple. once you have *anything* that starts to alter the balance away from "chaos", it is *required* that intelligent behaviour emerges in order to cope. it's a bit like (or exactly like, depending on scale/scope) the way that raindrops coalesce together to form larger ones under surface tension.

so no i *fundamentally disagree* that the word "intelligence" is an "appendage" even when applied to what could otherwise rather unfairly be termed "mindless" behaviour. wherever there is nature, if we use the term "mindless" then, far from there *being* no intelligence at whatever level we are observing, it may instead be said that we have entirely *missed the scale/scope* on which intelligence is operating.

"I have now watched a video interview with Dr.Hankey talking about his physics education and yoga and Ayurveda, as I had never heard of him before"

ah! fascinating to note that such things can be found. i did note that his wikipedia page is an "orphan" (no other pages link to it). he is certainly aware of david chalmers (director for centre of consciousness) and also fqxi's scientific director, max tegmark. certainly it is an extremely small but growing community that is beginning to understand and feel comfortable discussing consciousness. dr hankey was... extremely lucky to have had direct access to maharishi mahesh yogi back in the 1970s.

Luke, thank you for your reply. Re. the acorn I was thinking about the acorn/tree DNA of the individual but you are right that there is a lot of variation among the population of individuals.

I see clearly now the the difference between 'intelligence' as used in general parlance; to describe an entity that has characteristics such as reasoning, comprehension, ability to learn and more, compared to your use of the word as a synonym for 'self organisation' applicable to processes and inanimate matter. Clearly they are very different meanings of the word intelligent. I agree that the higher mental function intelligence requires the organisation of matter that can be reduced to individual particles. I think it is misleading to put the word intelligent on the organizing which happens via mindless physics and chemistry. Self organisation is not a standard definition of 'intelligent'. No problem with 'creative self organisation' as a description though.

I like that you have thought about the question and how it can or can't be answered, and how it might be usefully modified.

Good effort which also gives me the opportunity to play the devil's advocate for a while. I will try avoiding all such emphatic terms like "interesting" or worse, "fascinating" that have recently being called to attention as being entirely devoid of meaning (S. L Garfinkel, "whatever you do, dont call this an interesting idea", aeon e-magazine) It is yet intriguing that starting...

Good effort which also gives me the opportunity to play the devil's advocate for a while. I will try avoiding all such emphatic terms like "interesting" or worse, "fascinating" that have recently being called to attention as being entirely devoid of meaning (S. L Garfinkel, "whatever you do, dont call this an interesting idea", aeon e-magazine) It is yet intriguing that starting from questions pertaining to this old philosophical problem of mind vs matter, which in modern parlance became mind out of the 'mindless', being that a 'law' or otherwise, ends up with a call to 'self-censorship'.

This is the only thing I found a bit troubling as it is in the contradictions and the mystery that the spirit finds reason to sprout, at least according to Hegel. And why, this Maharishi inspired harmonious holistic understanding still leaves unanswered a very well known from antiquity old problem, the (in)famous "problem of evil". There is perhaps an intimate relationship with the doubt finally relieved near the end of the last section. I don't think we are indeed in a position to understand consciousness as yet, but this of course does not exclude the possibility of certain almost-perfect imitations and that I can find perfectly possible as I have myself put some effort into the same

direction some time ago. But now I am facing an ethical conundrum for how would I censor my self at the time that I may just start learning something really interesting and/or meaningful/profound?

Then again, it might be that the original question that led us here was ill posed. It was never about 'mind' out of 'mindless'. Maybe it was just bad reductionism or an inability to grasp life as the powerset of all eventualities. This all reminds me of another excerpt from Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals", thε famous 'Bird of Prey', considered by

some tο be deep for showing us the perils coming out of grammatical mistakes. As they say, "...what is the lightning if not the flash?"

So yes, yours was an excellent, provoking exercise in deepening our doubts, disputes and sharpening our blades against such challenges which I can find pleasant for my taste.

i think you are right here. If one believes in a personal God and not just in a first source, this problem - the problem of evil - has to be answered.

Fist possibility: Its all a game, a kind of tour of souls away from their creator - to experience how it feels to be separated from God. Then we did choose all the evil by ourselves. Being separated from the realm of God does mean to be separated from his/her values and properties. This would explain the lack of such properties in our world.

Second possibility: Souls have been entrapped to be separated from God (in christian theology this was due to Lucifer who entrapped a huge part of souls in the heavens). Since every soul is made like the father (in some aspects), it is eternal and has free will (can choose).

In both cases the evil is not due to God, but due to the decisions of the souls. Personally i believe in Jesus Christ, i do not go to Church, i do not read the bible, but believe that Jesus lived, died and was resurrected from the dead. I am finished with all the esoteric nonsense i read and heard over the years. This stuff does not safe a single soul, neither here on earth from its problems, nor in the world after. It is just a kind of seducement, mixed with some real metaphysical experiences, a mix of lies with some truth to think one is just like God.

thanks theo :) yeah the unabridged version makes it clearer why i have a problem with the idea of scientists being able to understand consciousness sufficiently as to be able to implement it to bring about machine-conscious beings (... and then torture them). the lack of understanding *is* precisely why humanity would consider it perfectly ok to do that.

if we were not at a critical juncture where the power and money of one person could have such a dramatic impact on our ecosystem, in effect become a surgeon operating *on themselves* with neither knowledge or anaesthetic, risking killing us all in the process, i would not have written the conclusion that i had, because there would be no need.

much as i would *like* to get involved in the development of machine consciousness.

interestingly, that same high-level powerful group that has got together to collaborate to create Arrogantly-Artificial-Intelligence has *just* funded a think-tank on how humanity should cope if all goes to hell in a handbasket.

Geraldine Ewan wrote on Mar. 5, 2017 @ 17:59 GMT

I am interested to see the similarities between Luke's train of thought and reading that I have been doing recently concerning the nature of the Christian concept of the Trinity, particularly focussing on the work of Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. He and his colleagues promulgate the idea that Trinity is as much part of creation's...

I am interested to see the similarities between Luke's train of thought and reading that I have been doing recently concerning the nature of the Christian concept of the Trinity, particularly focussing on the work of Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque. He and his colleagues promulgate the idea that Trinity is as much part of creation's 'sacred dance' as are electrons or universes. I quote here from his recent writing:

Inner and Outer Worlds Converge

Everything came forth from the divine dance that is the Trinity. Our new appreciation of Trinity is giving us a new grounding for interfaith understanding. It’s giving us a marvelous new basis for appreciating how this mystery is embedded as the code, not just in our religious constructs, but also in everything that exists. Creation bears a “family resemblance” to the Creator.

If there is only one creator God, and if there is one core pattern to this God, then we can expect to find that pattern everywhere else too. One reason so many theologians are interested in Trinity right now is that the scientific understanding of everything from atoms to galaxies to organisms is affirming our Trinitarian intuitions. We can now use the old Trinitarian language with a whole new level of appreciation.

The deepest intuition of our poets, mystics, and Holy Writ are aligning with findings on the leading edges of science and empirical discovery. When inner and outer worlds converge like this, something beautiful is afoot—the reversal of a centuries-long lovers’ quarrel between science and spirituality, mind and heart.

Atomic scientists looking through microscopes and astrophysicists looking through telescopes are seeing a similarity of pattern: everything is in relationship with everything else. Scientists and contemplatives alike are confirming that the foundational nature of reality is relational, and everything is indeed a holon, a part that replicates and mimics the whole.

References:

Adapted from Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 69; and

what you wrote about Trinity is very interesting to me. I do not know to work you cited, but will take a closer look - if available in germany. If you are interested in some thoughts on trinities in the physical world, please see my comment to Steve Dufourny at my essay page (Feb. 16, 2017 @ 17:09 GMT).

Thanks for your comment and the citation! And if you want to read something about the problem of evil, please read my comment to Theophanes Eleftheriou Raptis, right above of your comment here.

Universe is an i-Sphere and we humans are capable of interpreting it as 4 dimensional dual torus inside a 3-Sphere, which consists of Riemann 2-sphere as Soul as depicted in S=BM^2 diagram in the attached doc. Soul is the simplest of the complex manifolds with in the 3-sphere, Mind and Body constitute the remaining complexity. Soul, Mind and Body are in a toroidal flux in human beings, exactly at the center of the 3-sphere one can experience the unity of the trinity and that is the now moment we experience. As there are 4 dimensions required for a 3-sphere, the regular 3 dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time, it is obvious that the 2-sphere (Riemann sphere) of consciousness with in us is with out the time dimension and hence the saying "eternal soul". Poincare` conjecture implies that consciousness is homeomorphic (same or similar) in all beings manifested in all dimensions of the universe, as i have shown that Riemann sphere can serve as the fundamental unit of consciousness.

utterly cool, sridattadev, and beautiful to know that you are gaining such insights. perhaps an additional insight for you:

if we may define a soul as being simply a MASSIVELY high order solution (and i really do mean exceptionally high) of Laplace's Y(theta, phi) spherical functions, our soul *may* develop without a body, but, like the surgeon that may need to operate on itself, it is necessary to maintain self-coherence - a coherent E.M. field - *at the same time*. this of necessity limits both the rate (and type) of self-development that may occur.

a body therefore provides an anchor for the E.M.-field-that-is-the-soul whilst allowing and supporting *cognitive dissonance* and subsequent fragmentation of the laplace solutions. in other words, the soul's attachment to the body *may* allow it to support states that would otherwise causes its complete collapse and fragmentation if it was not so attached. thus, birth (and life) provides the (risky!) opportunity for fast-track development.

cool, huh? :)

sridattadev kancharla replied on Mar. 6, 2017 @ 15:59 GMT

Dear Luke,

You are absolutely right and we concur fully, Soul can exist independently on it's own. Consciousness or Soul is fundamental and can further manifest Mind and Body if it chooses to. In a simple geometric evolution, a 2-Sphere (Soul) comes first and then evolves to a 3-sphere (Soul, Mind and Body). Also please see There are no goals as such it's all play.

This is a very pleasant essay to read. I resonate with the idea that consciousness is defined as a "Critical Instability Point." This matches with my conclusion that the laws of physics are a collective behavior at a critical point of universality. Consciousness only exists when connected with this through senses. That's my view. It's good to see that people are keeping the TM movement going.

thanks philip. so... extending what you say, logically (regarding consciousness): to *deny* the evidence of one's senses - or mind - would be the beginning of pathological states. we cannot *possibly* say that we are moving towards a goal, with aims or intent, if we seek at the same time to *deliberately* refuse to acknowledge certain input or conclusions. how could we? under such circumstance the adjustments needed to create the required corrective feedback cannot possibly be successful.

regarding TM: i feel that it's... kinda... well, it was one of the pioneers of what's now become much more prevalent, so now kinda "blends into in the background noise". but, more than that: you never *needed* to "support" the TM "movement", you just needed to do it :)

Joe Fisher replied on Mar. 10, 2017 @ 17:12 GMT

Dear Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton,

Please excuse me for I have no intention of disparaging in any way any part of your essay.

I merely wish to point out that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate.

Only nature could produce a reality so simple, a single cell amoeba could deal with it.

The real Universe must consist only of one unified visible infinite physical surface occurring in one infinite dimension, that am always illuminated by infinite non-surface light.

A more detailed explanation of natural reality can be found in my essay, SCORE ONE FOR SIMPLICITY. I do hope that you will read my essay and perhaps comment on its merit.

yes i've used "it really should be simpler than this" many many times. also however in the field of software engineering i have learned that sometimes it really does have to be complex in order to cover "all the options" shall we say. but even there, there is no need - no call - for wasting time "over-engineering". in complex systems this is especially true, where it is hard enough to understand what's going on *without* having "over-engineering" in the mix as well :)

l.

Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta wrote on Mar. 12, 2017 @ 05:14 GMT

Wonderful essay Leighton,

Your ideas and thinking are excellent. It is first time I met a reverse engineer and I am lucky to see his skills are used in neuron sciences and our brains. Best wishes.

Some of your words…

Those Reverse-Engineers that I have encountered in the Software Libre field have a rough time: their expertise allows them to foresee outcomes and make...

Your ideas and thinking are excellent. It is first time I met a reverse engineer and I am lucky to see his skills are used in neuron sciences and our brains. Best wishes.

Some of your words…

Those Reverse-Engineers that I have encountered in the Software Libre field have a rough time: their expertise allows them to foresee outcomes and make near-prescient predictions with startling accuracy that then, like the Prophets and Oracles from past millenia, has them hated, feared, ignored, despised and in some cases has large Corporations going after them - illegally or unethically or both - with absolutely everything they've got, including outright fabrication, blackmail of their sponsors as a way to stop their funding, and slander

……………………. Very sad state of affairs for such excellent skills.

I felt very happy that you are using Indian philosophy and logic like “Advaita Vedanta” and “Transidental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the leader of the TM Movement,”. They are very good things.

Your application examples like ‘human DNA,’ ‘Quantum Mechanics with a "twist": self-referral QM’, “Maharishi's perspective that the Unifying Field is "Creative Intelligence"

……………… Here I am proposing some form of detectable intelligence in the Universe which exhibits goals and reproduction in universe. Dynamic Universe Model is another mathematical model for Universe. Its mathematics show that the movement of masses will be having a purpose or goal, Different Galaxies will be born and die (quench) etc…just have a look at my essay… “Distances, Locations, Ages and Reproduction of Galaxies in our Dynamic Universe” where UGF (Universal Gravitational force) acting on each and every mass, will create a direction and purpose of movement…..

For your information Dynamic Universe model is totally based on experimental results. Here in Dynamic Universe Model Space is Space and time is time in cosmology level or in any level. In the classical general relativity, space and time are convertible in to each other.

Many papers and books on Dynamic Universe Model were published by the author on unsolved problems of present day Physics, for example ‘Absolute Rest frame of reference is not necessary’ (1994) , ‘Multiple bending of light ray can create many images for one Galaxy: in our dynamic universe’, About “SITA” simulations, ‘Missing mass in Galaxy is NOT required’, “New mathematics tensors without Differential and Integral equations”, “Information, Reality and Relics of Cosmic Microwave Background”, “Dynamic Universe Model explains the Discrepancies of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Observations.”, in 2015 ‘Explaining Formation of Astronomical Jets Using Dynamic Universe Model, ‘Explaining Pioneer anomaly’, ‘Explaining Near luminal velocities in Astronomical jets’, ‘Observation of super luminal neutrinos’, ‘Process of quenching in Galaxies due to formation of hole at the center of Galaxy, as its central densemass dries up’, “Dynamic Universe Model Predicts the Trajectory of New Horizons Satellite Going to Pluto” etc., are some more papers from the Dynamic Universe model. Four Books also were published. Book1 shows Dynamic Universe Model is singularity free and body to collision free, Book 2, and Book 3 are explanation of equations of Dynamic Universe model. Book 4 deals about prediction and finding of Blue shifted Galaxies in the universe.

With axioms like… No Isotropy; No Homogeneity; No Space-time continuum; Non-uniform density of matter(Universe is lumpy); No singularities; No collisions between bodies; No Blackholes; No warm holes; No Bigbang; No repulsion between distant Galaxies; Non-empty Universe; No imaginary or negative time axis; No imaginary X, Y, Z axes; No differential and Integral Equations mathematically; No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to General Relativity on any condition; No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models; No many mini Bigbangs; No Missing Mass; No Dark matter; No Dark energy; No Bigbang generated CMB detected; No Multi-verses etc.

Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true, like Blue shifted Galaxies and no dark matter. Dynamic Universe Model gave many results otherwise difficult to explain

Have a look at my essay on Dynamic Universe Model and its blog also where all my books and papers are available for free downloading…

hi Satyavarapu thank you for the comments and the introduction to your work. it occurs to me to mention that a friend of mine made me aware of his work as well (into 4-momentum: a perspective where you consider everything in terms of TIME x y and z), and he said to me that part of the base laws is that 4-MOMENTUM is conserved.

now, we're taught that *energy* is conserved but i was struck dumb for several minutes as to the possible implications of 4-momentum being conserved. not only can you derive the law of conservation of energy from that but also it implies that the RATE OF CHANGE of 4-momentum is ALSO CONSERVED.

if i understand your paper correctly, this could be, fundamentally, why you were able to derive the double blue/red-shift results that you did, because you would get a "push-back" from one galaxy onto the other.

i would be interested to hear your thoughts about the implications of conservation of 4-momentum.

Don Limuti wrote on Mar. 20, 2017 @ 23:14 GMT

Luke,

Boy am I impressed! From your essay I copyed "100% certainty is a pathological state of mind" And when I pasted it into this post I got "✶✵✵✪ ❝❡rt❛✐♥t② ✐s ❛ ♣❛t❤♦❧♦❣✐❝❛❧ st❛t❡ ♦❢ ♠✐♥❞✳"

I am still laughing ......I will read the rest of your essay. I know it will enlighten me. But I do not need to read further to give this essay a 10.

ha, hilarious :) appreciate you bringing william's essay to my attention. hmm, it explores bell's inequality.... have you seen joy christian's disproof of bell's theorem? very interesting battle going on there (which was sponsored by fqxi).

Don Limuti replied on Mar. 31, 2017 @ 18:26 GMT

Luke,

I did follow the battle in the FQXi.org blog. I did not have a dog in the fight...and it was over my head. However, the battle was furious. I have not seen such emotions, expressed by grown up people with advanced degrees! And it went on and on and on and on. I do think Joy Christian was treated unfairly (no matter if he was right or wrong).....Come on guys it's just physics!

i'm a software libre advocate and developer, having run (or more accurately "provided opportunity, rules and resources for people to explore the space of collaborating on a goal") and every now and then you get a contributor that just defies both rational logical behaviour and disregards expected social rules.

what i learned from interacting with such people is that they provide an opportunity for *you* to clarify your understanding of the subject matter that they are... shall we say... kindly "challenging". at some point, i learned that their ability to correctly identify differences between two data points is somehow deeply and pathologically flawed.

in the case of the antagonist who caused joy's paper to be retracted *WITHOUT HIM BEING NOTIFIED*, it is well-known in the scientific community that this particular antagonist is incapable of simple O-Level math. even i know about commutativity and that signs matter!

so whilst you may be capable of discerning, clarifying and identifying the point where the antagonistic individual has got "hung up

I note, "Thus, it is emphasized that goals are needed. If there is no goal, there is no means by which efforts may be focused."

Dr Alex Hankey's work to construct a new formulation of QM remained unstated. So, one is not in a position to infer whether there could be a mindful laws. While it is understandable that creating an empirical demonstration of such laws that...

I note, "Thus, it is emphasized that goals are needed. If there is no goal, there is no means by which efforts may be focused."

Dr Alex Hankey's work to construct a new formulation of QM remained unstated. So, one is not in a position to infer whether there could be a mindful laws. While it is understandable that creating an empirical demonstration of such laws that exhibit mindfulness could not be easy, even some indirect means to observe or derive could have been demonstrated. Without which it is near impossible to make headways to gain objective acceptance.

No doubt, it was fun to read, "The electron can even 'react' by changing its state, and can even expand its radius (move to an orbit), and team up with another electron to create a superconducting pair. All of which sounds pretty damn hyper-intelligent to my mind". My first reaction was what a brilliant argument.

If one ascribes the natural outcomes of electrons' interactions describable by 'mindless laws' as the achievement of their own wishful aims, then of course the definition itself has been turned onto its head, and then every act of every physical entity in the physical universe would appear intelligent. That is, a change in definition makes everything willful. Let me see if I can construct an example such that a violation of this principle becomes apparent. Each electron has intentions favoring its own goals, so does an atom, a molecule, and even an organism. What does the theory say, if electrons' aims are in opposition to atom's aims, atom's aims are in opposition to that of the hosting molecule or to another atom in the same molecule, and so on at each level in hierarchy?

If the components of an organism have aims in opposition to the whole organism, may be such that the organism dies but those molecules, or organs have their goals met. First, there has to be rules who wins over whom and how? Conflict among multitude of such mutual interests have to be resolved by new laws. Second, why do I not feel that I am in opposition to the will of any organ in my body, or that I am resolving the issues among multitude of organs in my body. Third, if each of the fundamental entities in nature is 'out to organize' themselves, then why does the 'increase in entropy' come into force at all? I mean, what intelligent source in the universe is beating the acts of these entities to enforce increase in entropy?

One thing is certain, this may constitute a high quality subject matter of quality science fiction, if a story teller is creative, and director is intelligent to portray conflicts and their resolution. Imagine, a photon is received by a matter body, an electron is knocked out, but it quickly decides to join another atom, or decides to go solo into the space, since different electrons may have different views about what is good for them. No, I am certainly not criticizing here, I am in fact having fun to see the possibilities.

I am also impressed with the author's non-dualist sense of empathy with all the elements of the universe. I do not find myself competent to judge, therefore, I refrain from rating this essay.

*deep breath*... it's time for me to mention, sadly, that the rules of this essay contest, being completely ambiguous (and unfairly applied) meant that i was forced to drastically cut the essay's length to 25,000 *keystrokes* where brendan was in fact measuring the size of a MICROSOFT WORD document as being under 25k in length as...

*deep breath*... it's time for me to mention, sadly, that the rules of this essay contest, being completely ambiguous (and unfairly applied) meant that i was forced to drastically cut the essay's length to 25,000 *keystrokes* where brendan was in fact measuring the size of a MICROSOFT WORD document as being under 25k in length as the "cut-off" criteria. 25,000 *keystrokes* is around 5 pages in length.

so it was flat-out impossible to add in references to dr hankey's work, or add further explanations, as i was under the impression that the length limit was a whopping 50% less than everyone else has been submitting.

that having been said i'll ask dr hankey for a doi reference (or other) to his papers. it's part of his paper on homeopathy, that much i remember. the basic principle is that operating at a critical instability point is what pretty much all (healthy) biological systems do: operate on a knife-edge between two extremes: implosion or explosion where even a single microscopic change in energy not just rapidly but *immediately* results in a drastic macroscopic whole-organism response.

in speaking with dr hankey last week i expanded on the importance of adding noise into a neural net. neurons operate on the principle that they respond (fire) if either multiple inputs fire (within a certain specific simultaneous time-range) or if *one* (or more) inputs fire *repeatedly* in quick succession.

detection in an eye of a single photon flashing at a low rate is thus flat-out impossible under normal circumstances: the single photon is (by way of being "single") simply not capable of firing multiple neurons, nor is it strong enough to result in the "multi-repeat" threshold.

so how does nature solve this? it does so by causing *all* neurons to fire randomly... and then *filters out* the randomness in *subsequent layers* of the network. so now, averaging over time, whereas previously we had an input of say "0.1" representing the single photon, we have "0.1 + randomness(0.9 +/- 0.12 sigma")... *now* what happens is that the randomness is disturbed by that single photon, one of the neurons fires more than the randomness would otherwise dictate, and we have a means to detect ultra-ultra-slow-speed *single photons*.

thus, paradoxically, by adding randomness into a biological system (instability), it is able to detect microscopic changes. however, having randomness in a system like this could easily result in total garbage... and *that's* what the "critical instability point" detection is all about. it's necessary to *filter out* that randomness but you have to know how much randomness (on average) there was in the first place in order to filter it out. if you *don't* know then you either end up seeing "total darkness" or you end up seeing "total blinding white-light"! and for humans, in that case, the "feedback" mechanism would include "changing the iris size", thus bringing the whole system back to within the range where the randomness is smack in the middle of the detection range.

mmm... i appreciate your sentiment: i feel that if you ask the right non-judgemental questions, the answers are genuinely self-evident. if you miss out any of the logical-reasoning steps in between, however, the answers are less than clear.

"then every act of every physical entity in the physical universe would appear intelligent. That is, a change in definition makes everything willful."

welll doooone :) however read very carefully what georgina kindly pointed out, that i missed the fact that *all* DNA is not intelligent: certainly not the experiments recently carried out by some scientists where they used DNA as a "data store" to encode (and then decode) a video, for example (yes, really! look it up!). there *really* is something very very important - the critical-instability feedback - that is fundamental to defining what intelligence really is.

the characteristic which is present within a single electron and within a single neuron is that time-derivative "feedback" loop, resulting in both being capable of:

(a) storing "state"

(b) performing integration over time based on "state" and "input"

(c) performing differentiation over time based on the same

regardless of what the physical entity *is*, if those three characteristics are not present then the whole point of the essay is to state and emphasise that intelligence will *not* emerge. also, as a side-point (explored in more depth in dr hankey's work), if the feedback mechanisms are disrupted, the *capacity for intelligence is drastically reduced or is entirely destroyed*.

"What does the theory say, if electrons' aims are in opposition to atom's aims, atom's aims are in opposition to that of the hosting molecule or to another atom in the same molecule, and so on at each level in hierarchy?"

taking just the "electron's aims in opposition to atom's aims" part, that would indicate that someone's fired an electron at an atom using a particle accelerator, *completely* overcoming and overwhelming the atom's "aims" resulting in gamma radiation and other messy but ultimately beautiful patterns inimical to biological life (and the rest of the hierarchy).

to whit: operating *outside* of the stability constraints at one level *massively* disrupts their ability to be part *of* one (otherwise anticipated) stable hierarchy... moving them to another level instead (such as inside of a star, where such hugely energetic reactions are everyday / everynanosecond occurrences as part of *that* hierarchy).

whew, getting to be a long response... allow me the liberty of skipping question 1... :)

"Second, why do I not feel that I am in opposition to the will of any organ in my body, or that I am resolving the issues among multitude of organs in my body."

ha, veery good question! so tell me... have you never stayed up late at night, tired and irritable, then got ill for 2 days as a result, or eaten food that you *know* will get you into trouble, even though you *know*, from recent reports and scientific discoveries, that 75% of our immune system is actually in our intestines and that the wrong food or lack of sleep can disrupt the bacteria in our gut and make us ill?

have you never pushed your body beyond its physical strength and pulled a muscle, even though you *know* that if you exercise without enough water our bodies pull water away from non-critical areas (such as brain and organs) and put it into muscles instead?

have you not heard of breatharians, or the story of the old lady who took silicon (or some other supplement only 1 atomic number away from calcium) and stunned her doctors when her bones were shown in x-rays to have been completely healed of osteoporosis?

yeah we damn well *do* over-ride our body's organs' "will" with our own, where most creatures in the animal kingdom listen very very carefully, and we suffer greatly as a result! you've heard stories of peoples' hair *literally* going white overnight as a result of deep shock, i'm sure.

"I mean, what intelligent source in the universe is beating the acts of these entities to enforce increase in entropy?"

ha! very very good question. i do cover this point, briefly (annoyed that i had to cut it short). ok, so let's set up a universe where there is a completely uniformly random distribution of atoms. BOOMF, immediately you get some huge explosions as the various atoms react very very badly with each other, lots of fireballs result, but then they implode, leaving vacuum behind, gravity takes over and you get stars, black holes, blah blah.

random distribution started... total uniform distribution... infinite entropy at the beginning.... but VERY VERY QUICKLY entropy *DECREASES* (on average).

straight out of the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(order_and_disorder):

"Locally, the entropy can be lowered by external action. This applies to machines, such as a refrigerator, where the entropy in the cold chamber is being reduced, and to living organisms. This local decrease in entropy is, however, only possible at the expense of an entropy increase in the surroundings."

in the case of outer space, stars and galaxies *deprive* space of the opportunity to create entropy-lowering "entities" by TOTALLY DEPRIVING SPACE OF RESOURCES.

and that's really the point: entropy-lowering self-organising entities - at each level of the intelligence hierarchy - deprive their surrounding higher-entropy environment of the resources required to beat them.

so it's actually really rather simple, and is the underpinning behind evolution. darwin missed the opportunity to make this clear and common knowledge because he was primarily a taxonomist and researcher.

regarding the science-fiction concept of an electron demonstrating intelligence beyond its "station", that _would_ be fascinating but also, having read the "Turkey Lexicon to wannabe Sci-Fi writers" (look it up: it's hilarious) it would unfortunately not really be believable to the average modern sci-fi reader.

a much *more* believable story would be if some Evil Scientists worked out how to place quantum-entangled electrons *stably* into orbit around atoms (qty 1 or more), then used that to "influence" or spy on people... but the external intelligence would be the minds of the "Evil Scientists" rather than in the actual electrons themselves.

this potential story illustrates an important point, namely that the *system* has to include some agent beyond the scope of the electron itself in order to demonstrate intelligent behaviour beyond the scope of an "ordinary" electron. appealing as it might be for a single electron to gain intelligence beyond its station :)

we know however that if an electron gains sufficient energy to go "beyond its station" and still have some form of electron-like properties, it also gains mass... and becomes a muon, not an electron.

unfortunately we have to assume that sci-fi readers of today would be familiar with leptons etc. there *really are* some fundamental laws at work here, sadly, which prevent the sci-fi scenario from being plausible to the modern reader of today, rajiv :)

lastly, i perfectly understand your reticence to provide a rating, but i am just grateful for your insights and questions which i have really enjoyed answering, helping as they do to emphasise and communicate more effectively.

I must say that your is the more interesting among all, initially you have disgressed a little, but the content is worth reading.

It is interesting the theory of Alex Hankey (that the next months I must read), but I think the definition is right in some parts, but as you show could include each material point because of the critical point is not a stastistical point: if you use a statistical definition, naturally you get a definition of intelligence that is a macroscopical definition, and there is a clear demarcation between intelligence, and no intelligence, macroscopical matter.

This is a clear example of a goal as the context required.

The self censorship can only slow the research in the field (and it is always a political censorship), but in each case the result are achieved, so that I think that one must think about the ethics of the research, to reduce (or eliminate) the deleterious effects of the results: I think the possible results obtainable by an artificial intelligence in the care of the ills of the world.

thank you domenico, wow, that's quite a committment to read every essay! greatly appreciated that you consider mine to be the most interesting.

as i outlined to rajiv just now, purely applying a statistical analysis to a biological system operating at a critical instability point is not enough: you *have* to have a feedback mechanism (based on the statistical average) that lowers and raises the "threshold of detection / reaction" accordingly. osmosis in the case of cells, neural suppression and stimulation chemicals in the case of brains and so on.

the call for self-censorship is not one that i expect to be heeded, simply because, if i am allowed to be truly blunt and honest, i do not have the confidence in the "Arrogantly-Artificial Intelligence" scientific community to comphrehend the nature of consciousness *in themselves*. the feedback mechanism which would allow them to *create* conscious machines is thus entirely missing, such that i would genuinely expect them, like the millionth monkey, to be just as likely to erase the experiment that resulted in machine-consciousness by virtue of them being *unable to test for and recognise its existence*!

the warning is therefore for those scientists that *do* have a working definition of consciousness that they can clearly articulate to others. that's quite a small community at present. it's primarily to these people to whom my warning is directed. they don't have much time: elon musk has just announced his insane intent to create a working commercial neural lace. absolutely no mention WHATSOEVER of whether the operator will be permitted the right to modify the software in order to ensure their own survival and the absolute sovereign right to keep other people *literally* out of their own mind. unbelievable.

Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Apr. 1, 2017 @ 23:32 GMT

Dear Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton,

Having read your essay I now know why you are so enthusiastic about mine!

We differ primarily in terminology. If you review the definitions I begin my essay with, you will find that consciousness, defined as awareness plus volition, is essentially 'content free'. When one adds logical structure (always reducible to ANDs and NOTs) one...

Having read your essay I now know why you are so enthusiastic about mine!

We differ primarily in terminology. If you review the definitions I begin my essay with, you will find that consciousness, defined as awareness plus volition, is essentially 'content free'. When one adds logical structure (always reducible to ANDs and NOTs) one can obtain specific structural physical reality of some sort, and if such structure is dynamic, then the consciousness field can couple to it and this constitutes intelligence. [You might read my response to Natesh Ganesh on my page at Mar 24 @05:10 GMT].

If, further, one postulates that physical reality of the particles derives from the "condensed" field, then it is probably appropriate to speak of the consciousness field as "Creative Intelligence". You capture the essence of this when you say:

"…no sentient being is intelligent. We – and our minds – are merely riding on the back of [I would say "embedded in"] an inherent and fundamental property and characteristic substrate known as "The Universe": the "Field" [the consciousness field] of "Creative Intelligence". We are literally borrowing its capacity to support thought"

You have stated this as well as it can be stated.

The substrate is the field itself. I prefer not to state more specifics until I can back them up. And I feel closer to being able to back them up, but as you note: "100% certainty is a pathological state of mind."

The discontinuity for me was, after decades of trying to understand consciousness, when I decided (almost 100% !) that it was a field, and asked myself how it could interact with matter. I raise my arm against gravity. How does 'consciousness' make that happen? After postulating how the field physically couples to matter, things started falling into place, and have continued to do so for the last decade. I do not believe one can mathematically represent awareness (except as an iterative feedback loop that oversimplifies and really misses the point of what awareness "is") but I do believe that one can mathematically describe the interaction or coupling of the field to matter [ideally viewed as particulate 'condensation' of the field].

Luke, you have far too much info in your essay to respond to in a comment, but I would say your instinct, your intuition, your understanding is essentially correct [or at least agrees with me!]. Thank you for writing and submitting it.

really appreciate your insights. yes different terminology: it took me a while to work past the word "agent" to the heart of what you are saying.

regarding being "embedded in" / borrowing / etc. the field of creative intelligence, i am reminded of the recent experiments to test if we are living in a simulation ("The Matrix"). that reminds me of two things: firstly, the film "Men in Black II", and secondly, some work on Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime where it was postulated that black holes event horizons are simply *dividing-lines* between universes.

each "closed universe" would therefore be on the *INSIDE* of any given black hole within *ANOTHER* universe.

thus, hilariously, the answer to the question "are we inside a simulation" could well - potentially falsely if the tests are not carried out properly - be answered YES by accidentally interacting with the universe outside of the closed-bubble of our black-hole event horizon.

regarding the "field of intelligence"... if it exists, it should be possible to (a) quantify it (b) test for its existence (c) put it to good use (d) etc. etc.

more later

Peter Jackson wrote on Apr. 4, 2017 @ 14:15 GMT

Luke,

Brilliant essay! You really need to read mine!

I agree with just about all you wrote so well, a most important part being that, for QM; "Occam's Razor tells us that there has to be a simpler way."

There is.

And it's hot off the press; 'Classic QM'. Yours is about to get a well earned top score and I'm pretty sure once you've read it you'll agree mine as worth that too. (but hurry for the deadline!) Then see the video too.

hi peter - turns out i already did read yours and rate it, some weeks back! :) i did a more comprehensive review just now.

Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich wrote on Apr. 7, 2017 @ 08:12 GMT

Dear Sirs!

Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of Newton returned as the New Cartesian Physic and promises to be a theory of everything. To tell you this good news I use «spam».

New Cartesian Physic based on the identity of space and matter. It showed that the formula of mass-energy equivalence comes from the pressure of the Universe, the flow of force which on the corpuscle is equal to the product of Planck's constant to the speed of light.

New Cartesian Physic has great potential for understanding the world. To show it, I ventured to give "materialistic explanations of the paranormal and supernatural" is the title of my essay.

Visit my essay, you will find there the New Cartesian Physic and make a short entry: "I believe that space is a matter" I will answer you in return. Can put me 1.